Mumbai

It's another edition of Global Tattle and we begin in India, where — don't let the kids read this one — Bollywood beauty Meenakshi Thapar was kidnapped, strangled and beheaded while shooting her latest film, "Heroine. " According to the London Telegraph, Thapar's killers were two actors she met on set. She had allegedly been bragging about her family's wealth when Amit Jaiswal and his lover Preeti Surin decided to invite her on a trip to see the Buddhist temples of Gorakhpur.

SO WHEN DID Bombay become Mumbai? Officially, in 1995, when the Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena won elections in the state of Maharashtra. After the election, the party announced that the port city had been renamed after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, the city's patron deity. Federal agencies, local businesses and newspapers were ordered to adopt the change. Shiv Sena's leadership had pushed for the change for years, arguing that "Bombay" was a corrupted English version of "Mumbai" and an unwanted legacy of British rule.

EVEN THOUGH they may have, in part, inspired the most critically acclaimed, feel-good movie of the year, several dozen residents of the poorest section of Mumbai protested the award-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" yesterday, calling the film's title insulting. The protest came amid mounting excitement for the film's opening today in India - where the movie is set and home to many of its actors. "I am poor, but don't call me slumdog," said Rekha Dhamji, 18, one of about two dozen slum residents who protested outside the home of one of the movie's actors, Anil Kapoor.

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI - Indian officials said Thursday that the bombers who had traumatized Mumbai during the evening rush a day earlier appeared to be trained in handling explosives and had possibly used timers to synchronize the deadly triple blast. But they also said that investigators had not identified any suspects and that a soaking rainstorm had impeded evidence-gathering. As of late Thursday, no group had claimed responsibility for the three explosions that killed 17 people and wounded 131 in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, on Wednesday.

WITH A domestic gross over $100 million and a case full of Oscars, the stars of "Slumdog Millionaire" are the toast of Hollywood. In Mumbai, they're Lebron James, Beyonce, Brad Pitt and the Jonas Brothers all rolled into one. The child stars returned home from the Oscars yesterday to a chaotic but rousing heroes' welcome, with dozens of armed police needed to escort them through the cheering crowds. The four young Mumbians came out with arms around each others shoulders.

Companies in Philadelphia and worldwide were clamping down on travel to Mumbai yesterday, as the terrorist attacks in India reverberated on many fronts. GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., which is based in London and has large operations in the Philadelphia area, said it had suspended employee travel to India for now. AstraZeneca P.L.C., which has extensive operations in Wilmington and a research and development facility in Hyderabad, India, said it had suspended employee travel to Mumbai.

THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS has named Samuel L. Jackson the highest-grossing actor of all time. Since Jackson debuted in Spike Lee 's "Jungle Fever" in 1991, his 100 movies have made more than $7.4 billion. The Hollywood Reporter says "Jurassic Park" ($914 million), "Pulp Fiction" ($212 million) and the "Star Wars" prequels ($2.4 billion) were big contributors to the record. Tattle's box office guru David Bleiler says the record is a little misleading because Jackson wasn't the star of many of the films in question.

It doesn't happen often, but when it does, look out: a movie that rocks and rolls, that transports, startles, delights, shocks, seduces. A movie that is, quite simply, great. Slumdog Millionaire , the epic yarn of a Mumbai street urchin who grows up and goes on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - and then keeps getting the answers right, one stunner after another - is that movie. It's exhilarating. It's life-affirming. (Am I gushing enough?) It's about true love and destiny, about raging poverty and vast wealth, about the global powerhouse that is India in the 21st century.

If you're walking in Center City this weekend, near 16th and Market streets, don't mind the FBI helicopters overhead or the sounds of gunfire. "Don't be concerned, it's just a movie," said Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office. And it's not just any Hollywood movie. The feature is a Bollywood production - straight from Mumbai, India. It marks the first time a major Bollywood film production has shot on the streets of Philly. Thus, the men shooting blanks are not "SWAT agents" and the helicopters will be made over to appear as FBI aircraft.

Jagjit Singh, 70, a singer of wide popularity in South Asia who helped revive and popularize ghazals - a venerable form of Persian poetry set to music expressing the writer's feelings, especially about love - died Monday in Mumbai. The cause was a brain hemorrhage. Until Mr. Singh embraced the form, ghazal singing was followed largely by the elite. He helped bring it to a wider audience, including young people steeped in rock and hip-hop. With a hauntingly velvet voice expressing the brooding sadness and the lyricism of his songs, he performed to packed audiences in India, Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia and released dozens of albums during his 40-year career.

It's another edition of Global Tattle and we begin in India, where — don't let the kids read this one — Bollywood beauty Meenakshi Thapar was kidnapped, strangled and beheaded while shooting her latest film, "Heroine. " According to the London Telegraph, Thapar's killers were two actors she met on set. She had allegedly been bragging about her family's wealth when Amit Jaiswal and his lover Preeti Surin decided to invite her on a trip to see the Buddhist temples of Gorakhpur.

Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity By Katherine Boo Random House. 288 pp. $27 Reviewed by Rita Giordano On the road to the international airport of Mumbai, India's richest city, near a crop of luxury hotels, the length of a concrete wall of yellow advertisements boasted a slogan for upscale floor tiles: BEAUTIFUL FOREVER, BEAUTIFUL FOREVER. BEAUTIFUL FOREVER. Behind that wall lay Annawadi, a slum of makeshift housing, trash scavengers and thieves, the minimally employed, fathers, mothers, children, orphans, living among rats and woeful livestock beside a sewage lake.

Question: I'm an Indian national residing in the United States. I was scheduled to fly from Houston to Mumbai on British Airways recently. My itinerary involved a short stopover in London. In Houston, while checking in with British Airways, I was denied boarding because my work visa was not stamped in my passport. The original visa stamped in my passport had expired and I was traveling to India in order to get my renewed visa stamped at the U.S. consulate in Mumbai. I was carrying an application that permits me to continue living and working legally in the U.S. and to travel abroad.

It makes perfect sense that the man who directed Pixar's The Incredibles, and won a best animated feature Oscar for his trouble, is behind the camera on Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. The Tom Cruise franchise, about a crack team of special agents who save the world by performing impossibly impossible acts of deception, detection, and derring-do, has become a kind of cartoon anyway. No one really believes that Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his gang have inner lives, or even outer lives beyond the machinations of the mission at hand.

THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS has named Samuel L. Jackson the highest-grossing actor of all time. Since Jackson debuted in Spike Lee 's "Jungle Fever" in 1991, his 100 movies have made more than $7.4 billion. The Hollywood Reporter says "Jurassic Park" ($914 million), "Pulp Fiction" ($212 million) and the "Star Wars" prequels ($2.4 billion) were big contributors to the record. Tattle's box office guru David Bleiler says the record is a little misleading because Jackson wasn't the star of many of the films in question.

Jagjit Singh, 70, a singer of wide popularity in South Asia who helped revive and popularize ghazals - a venerable form of Persian poetry set to music expressing the writer's feelings, especially about love - died Monday in Mumbai. The cause was a brain hemorrhage. Until Mr. Singh embraced the form, ghazal singing was followed largely by the elite. He helped bring it to a wider audience, including young people steeped in rock and hip-hop. With a hauntingly velvet voice expressing the brooding sadness and the lyricism of his songs, he performed to packed audiences in India, Pakistan and elsewhere in South Asia and released dozens of albums during his 40-year career.

Sketch developed in Mumbai blasts NEW DELHI - Investigators have prepared a sketch of a suspect they want to question over the three deadly bomb blasts that shook India's financial hub Mumbai, police said Sunday. The drawing, composed from witness accounts, would be circulated among officials investigating the blasts but would not immediately be released to the public, a police official said on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, a man picked up by police for questioning in connection with the blasts died Sunday in a Mumbai suburb.

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI - Indian officials said Thursday that the bombers who had traumatized Mumbai during the evening rush a day earlier appeared to be trained in handling explosives and had possibly used timers to synchronize the deadly triple blast. But they also said that investigators had not identified any suspects and that a soaking rainstorm had impeded evidence-gathering. As of late Thursday, no group had claimed responsibility for the three explosions that killed 17 people and wounded 131 in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, on Wednesday.

MUMBAI, India - Three coordinated bombings tore through the heart of India's busy financial capital during rush hour yesterday, killing 21 people and wounding 141 in the worst terror attack in the country since the 2008 Mumbai siege. Bloody bodies were strewn in the dirt of Mumbai's crowded neighborhoods and markets. Doors were ripped off storefronts, motorcycles were charred and a bus stop was shredded. After the blasts in three separate neighborhoods, police set up checkpoints and were put on high alert.

MUMBAI, India - Three coordinated bombings tore through the heart of India's financial capital during rush hour Wednesday, killing 21 people and wounding 141 in the worst extremist attack in the country since the 2008 Mumbai siege. Bloody bodies were strewn in Mumbai's crowded neighborhoods and markets. Doors were ripped off storefronts, motorcycles were charred, and a bus stop was shredded. After the blasts in three separate neighborhoods, police set up checkpoints and were put on high alert.